When we reject another, we deny the truth

Easter, Sunday 5B 28. 4. 2024

(Acts 9:26-31, John 15:1-18)

The First Nations actor Jack Charles reached a degree of peace, contentment and acceptance by the end of his life. This was despite being terribly rejected many times during the course of it. When he was a toddler, government agencies took him from his mother; in a Salvation Army boys’ home he was often sexually abused, and at the age of seventeen, the police locked him in a reformatory for – illegally! – trying to find and connect with his family members. But despite twenty years of heroin addiction, and working as a frequently jailed cat burglar to support his habit, he became an excellent artist and a respected elder.

But Jack Charles’ mother suffered profound three-fold rejection all her life. She suffered the racist, universal rejection of all First Nations people; she was rejected as a mother by having the nine surviving children of the eleven to whom she gave birth stolen from her by the government; and he was rejected even by her own people, who believed she was somehow connected with the death of a tribal elder.

We see people being rejected by others in every area of life. Sadly, we often ourselves “write them off”. But the answer to this terrible, unnecessary abuse of human beings seems to lie in what we find in today’s reading from the Gospel of John. Its author recorded many things about Jesus of Nazareth, whom he saw as God living among us, the Logos become human, “the word made flesh”. This author reports that in his parting message, Jesus told us that we – the human race – are all included in an amazing web of life similar to the organic unity found in living plants. This web has a divine source, and in it every human person is intimately joined, as the countless cells of a vine are given life and made fruitful by the sap flowing through it.

If only people – we ourselves – could begin to see this truth. Even if we no longer see much benefit in formal religion as it is presented, and struggl to find a “spirituality” to replace it. For in the understanding Joh’s gospel, the vine of which we are all part is an almost incomprehensible Person who “In the beginning…” made “everything that was made”. And that Person loves us.

If only we could look at each other, especially at people who are different in race, politics or in any other way, and see that we literally share the same lifeblood, and come from the same creator!

if only we could unlock this amazing truth from the pages of the bible and from the pulpits of our churches, and apply it in our lives, would not the world be very different?

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Autobiography: Jack Charles, Born Again Blackfella, Penguin 2020.

“We shall see God as God really is”

Easter, Sunday 4 21^st April 2024

(John 10: 11-18, 1 John 3:2)

Many young Catholics, even before they leave school, lose interest in attending Sunday Mass. Parents and grandparents have long been expressing their concern about this trend. Older folk also struggle to find reasons why they should continue to attend, and many decide not to.

Could this dissatisfaction in young and old be happening at least partly because our churches do not bring people into real contact with the infinite mystery of God? Let’s look at the metaphor for God that we use in the gospel on “Good Shepherd Sunday”. When Jesus called himself the “good shepherd”, he was speaking to people who every day would see shepherds leading their small flocks along the road to and from pasture. Those shepherds knew each animal by name, and their sheep knew and trusted them.

So in the earliest days church leaders reasonably used the title “pastor”, but unfortunately, over the centuries, because many clerics had superior knowledge the title came to be associated with superior power and control rather than with love and concern for persons. Clerical privilege led to the scandal of tens of thousands of children being abused, and the crimes concealed.

Some people might find questionable Pope Francis’ metaphor that clergy should immerse themselves in the “smell of the sheep”. Who wants – even metaphorically – to be seen as a dumb sheep, anonymous among a huge flock, waiting to be shorn or sent to the abattoir?

Some clerics speak and write as if God has revealed God’s self once and for all, and that clerics hold the key to this cache of esoteric information. It would seem more helpful, especially to young people, if we were to teach in our churches that God reveals God’s self in every flower, sunrise, thunderstorm and human face. If clerics mistakenly call such teaching pantheism, they might learn – for example from Thomas Aquinas – that God is within every particle of creation.

We need to move beyond this contemplative vision – true as it is – to learn from Jesus that God loves each of us with all our faults, far more tenderly than any two lovers ever held each other, or parents looked at a newborn child.

Perhaps more people would come to church if they heard us clerics remind them, as saint John did in this letter, that each of us is already like God (Genesis 1:26-27), and that after our death we will see God “as God really is”?

Almost half of the people who have been clinically dead for a short while see a real mystical vision. They find themselves out of their body but still conscious and deeply at peace. They meet and communicate with a “Being of Light”, who is seen by people of every faith or of none, and whom Christians recognise as Christ.

But I have known clerics to scoff at this Near Death Experience. Perhaps if we “leaders” listened more carefully to people’s experiences, rather than imagine we hold a monopoly on truth, then more people would feel welcome in our churches?

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What can we learn from the wheat grain?

5th Sunday of Lent          17.3.2024

(John 12:20-33)

The Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert has for many years practised and taught medicine in Gaza and the West Bank, among Palestinians who at the hands of Israel have suffered the theft of their land, bombing raids, arbitrary imprisonment and torture, and now face starvation. In a recent interview, the doctor remarked how he was impressed by the impressive dignity and patience with which Palestinians endured suffering. Palestinians themselves call this quality of steadfastness, endurance and nonviolent resistance sumud. More than a passive virtue, sumud takes active form when people willingly help each other in the most distressing situations.

We might suspect that sumud is actually enhanced and strengthened by injustice and suffering such as Palestinians have endured since 1947. We know how, in difficult and even catastrophic situations our own human qualities can grow stronger. Think of floods, bushfires, and our parents’ or grandparents’ wartime experiences. There are parallels too, at the bodily level: athletes need to undergo arduous training to strengthen muscles and develop their sporting skills.

Jesus seems to refer to this same principle when in today’s reading from John’s gospel he speaks of the wheat grain which has to be destroyed to make the future harvest possible. This idea is central to all four gospels, although expressed in slightly different ways. They tell us that “those who wish to save their life will destroy it”; “those who seek to gain their life will lose it”, and “the one who finds their life will lose it”. To emphasise its importance, the gospels repeat this principle in reverse, saying that only by losing or destroying our life can we save it.

These are not self contradicting statements. The “life” that is destroyed and the life that is saved must refer to different levels of our being. Two millennia after Jesus, psychologists would say that it is our ego that must be put aside, to reveal and develop something much deeper within us. There is in us a shadow self – the ego – and a deeper Self. A mature person learns to put aside their feelings, their comfort, and their less urgent preferences for more important things, like helping or loving someone else. The instinct to help others can be seen in many animals species, but reaches sublime heights in human love.

In the same gospel passage, Jesus said: “when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all to myself”. He knew he would soon be crucified: that terrible torture by which the Roman empire killed anyone who opposed it. Being “lifted up” was similar to the crude expression “strung up”, by which not long ago we described hanging, our own empire’s method of killing offenders.

Jesus was predicting that for promoting God’s rule of love and peace he would be killed by the empire of human greed and power. His powerful act of self-giving love would, through the ages, draw countless people to see that our Creator loves us infinitely and forgives us. When Jesus said: “…I will draw all people to myself” was he telling us that all of us – even those who cause others to suffer – will eventually be “saved”, brought to fulfilment by the love of Christ, who is not separate from the One who sent him?

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Thinking about temples

Lent Sunday 3 3.3.2024

(John 2:13-25)

In every city and town of Europe, and wherever Europeans made colonies around the world, churches and cathedrals are a common sight. In Australia, Christian places of worship are scattered in every town, sometimes on adjacent corners of our main streets. Likewise, in parts of the world where populations practice Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, temples, pagodas and mosques are a common sight.

Archaeologists have found the remains of temples that date back to at least 9500 years BC, and we know that even earlier, people who left no buildings of brick or stone had their sacred places. For uncounted millennia, Australia’s First Nations peoples performed their religious rituals at corroboree grounds and bora rings.

Why have people always set aside spaces as “holy” or “sacred”? Surely it is because they have always had genuine experience of reality far beyond what we can see or touch. Although we have extended our knowledge of the physical world so that we can explain earthquakes, thunderstorms and even the orbits of planets and the decay of stars, our minds cannot comprehend “why there is something rather than nothing”. Wise people in every culture on earth have concluded that we and our world – which we now know is part of more than a trillion galaxies – must derive from a conscious Mind. Can this be merely ignorant superstition?

And so people have built temples, spaces marked out and adorned, where they try to honour and communicate with the gods or God responsible for our existence and for our endless future. In this matter too, human thought and experience have grown and evolved.

The ancient Hebrew peoples’ experience of God taught them to make a temple at whose centre was an empty space, representing the One who is nameless and unknowable. This temple played an important part in the formation of Jesus, who was raised in the Jewish culture and faith. But he was a turning point. At his baptism he realised that he was filled with the Spirit. He later challenged those who ruled his people from the temple precinct, particularly because they exploited the poor.

It went deeper: Jesus taught that a new Reign of God was beginning with himself. Humanity had reached a new stage, when people would worship “in spirit and in truth” as Jesus told the Samaritan woman (John 4:23). Jesus even promised that “this temple” was soon to be destroyed – ambiguously referring to Jerusalem’s prestigious icon and to his own body. With great daring he symbolically cleansed the temple of corruption and temporarily shut it down. The gospel writers point out that when Jesus died the curtain concealing the Holy of Holies was symbolically torn apart, (Mark 15:38) because the risen Christ can now directly give us God’s Spirit. Christians well know that “…you are God’s temple, and the Spirit Of God is living in you” (1 Cor 3:16, 2 Cor 6:16, Eph 2:21)

Nevertheless we are social beings, and we need to meet together to praise God, as well as to build our community. We need a worthy meeting place in which to gather, and naturally we like to make this place beautiful. But there is an ever-present danger that we will focus too much on the “temple” – its beauty, its cost, or the prestige and power assumed by those who administer it – while we neglect or even lose contact with the Infinite Mystery within each of us that the physical building represents.

Tragically, Christians have even sometimes shut out from their temple people whom they consider “unworthy”, forgetting that the persons they reject are of infinitely more worth than the building from which they are excluded.

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Massive floods of water, and of faithful love

Lent 1B 18. 2. 2024

(Genesis 9:8-15, Mark 1:12-15)

Among the kinds of damage we might sometimes have to cope with, having our house flooded is surely one of the worst. Some people in Queensland have been flooded three times within twelve months, in the abnormal storms that global warming is causing in that part of our world. Scarcely had those unfortunate householders finished the difficult and depressing work of cleaning up, when another ferocious storm destroyed all their efforts.

Probably every culture on earth has in its collective memory a mythical story of a great flood. Scripture scholars show us that the flood story in Genesis is of this kind. We were ignorant to have accepted it as literally true. Was the entire earth flooded? Could a hand-built wooden boat carry two each of the millions of species of creatures? Who could provide, for forty days, the enormous variety of foods that they needed? It is hard enough to feed our pets. As with Jonah and his “great fish”, it is a waste of time trying to explain these powerful mythical stories as if they were literally true.

Through billions of years of evolution, we humans have developed remarkable brains with which we handle consciousness. Every culture has some awareness that we come from the infinite consciousness of what we call “God”. Many individuals try communicate with this Source of all that is, and it is these “listeners” who have given us these “inspired” stories which fill the bible. Taken together they gradually inform us that despite the natural tragedies that trouble humanity, which we are inclined to imagine are caused by our own guilt, God has made a covenant with us and will always care for us. “The universe is friendly”, although by our negligence and greed we are damaging this planet so badly that the natural world is becoming more difficult to live in. But the ancients interpreted the beautiful phenomenon of the rainbow as a symbol of God’s covenant, a faithful promise to be always “on our side”.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus was “driven by the Spirit” to spend a long time in the desert so as to better encounter God, from whom he had just heard- at his baptism – “you are my beloved son”. In his forty days of solitude he was tempted by all the negative forces that exist in ourselves and in the world. He overcame them, preparing himself to announce to the world the Good News of the Reign of God.

When we deliberately enter into silence, whether for minutes or days, we find not only that our Creator’s promise is infinitely more powerful than any planetary disasters – after all, our planet is a tiny fragment among God’s trillion galaxies – nor is the Creator merely our friend. The unimaginable Holy Spirit, Infinite Love, lives within us and all other people. It is our privilege to be able to develop this friendship, this love.

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Is God compassionate, or violent?

Sunday 3B    21 January 2024

[Jonah, Mark 1:14-20]

This Sunday’s first reading from the book of Jonah fits well with the gospel, which shows Jesus calling disciples and beginning publicly to proclaim: “The Reign of God is close at hand: repent and believe the Good News.”

It would be interesting to ask a range of Christians what they think is this Good News. All four gospels tell us how Jesus showed by words and actions that God has deep compassion for us all. Jesus’ first sermon summed it up: “Blessed are the poor; those who mourn…”. In our most difficult times, God embraces us.

When Jesus was challenged to prove his authority by giving a sign, he would give no sign “except the sign of Jonah” (Matthew 16:4), the prophet who was swallowed by a fish. Jesus was quoting a book in the bible which is actually fiction: a fable. There was a real prophet Jonah (2 Kings 14:25), but he had nothing to do with Assyria. It was another prophet, Nahum, who threatened that God would take wrathful revenge against the Assyrian empire.

So how was Jonah a sign, prefiguring Jesus? The story was written for the Jewish people when they were in exile and believed, as many parts of the bible taught, that God had turned against them because they had sinned. Like the Book of Job, the Book of Jonah challenges that theology of divine retribution. It uses humour and irony to teach that God is not vengeful, but would have compassion even on the terrible Assyrians.

The fictional Jonah, like the real prophet Nahum, hated the Assyrians, renowned for their violence and cruelty. When God orders Jonah to go and warn them so that they would change their ways, he refuses. He runs away in the opposite direction, taking ship for Tashish, the most remote place known to the ancient world. God of course sees this and sends a huge storm, which is about to smash the ship, when Jonah admits to the crew that he is the cause of the storm and asks to be thrown overboard. The storm abates, and God carefully saves Jonah by sending a big fish that eventually places him on dry land.

There is deeper meaning in all this. As happens when we turn against the Power that made us, it is Jonah’s disobedience and conflict with God that causes the violent storm; and God’s vast compassion which calms the storm and even controls great sea monsters. When Jesus chose the sign of Jonah, was he foretelling how God’s powerful love would save him too from the darkness of death, three days after the leaders of Religion and State had murdered him?

But there’s more. Jonah does get to preach to the Assyrian capital: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.” But their king commands everyone to refrain from violence; to fast and wear sackcloth, even (ridiculously) the animals. So the city is spared from destruction, as Jonah himself had been.

But Jonah still wants God be violent. He camps outside the city, hoping to see it destroyed. The sun scorches him but God kindly provides a vine for shade. Later, when God lets the vine wither and die, Jonah complains that he is exposed to the fierce east wind. God gently asks him why he is concerned about the loss of his vine, but has no compassion for the thousands of Ninevites or their animals. Then Jonah grudgingly admits what he suspected all along: “that you were a tender and compassionate God, slow to anger, rich in faithful love.”

Jonah is quoting from Exodus 34:6, but significantly leaves out the harsh end of the sentence: “…by no means excusing the guilty”. The fable of Jonah was a shift in the bible’s theology, a fitting preparation for Jesus who showed us the all-compassionate, non-violent God, whose Reign will be established when we realise God is within us, renounce violence and love even our enemies.

With thanks to Anthony Bartlett, Signs Of Change: The Bible’s Evolution of Divine Non-Violence, Cascade Books, 2022.

Why do we need epiphanies?

Epiphany   7^th January 2024

[Matthew 2:1-12]

An epiphany happens when something new and remarkable is shown to us. Epiphanies are precious, because we live, as it were, in a small circle of darkness. Gradually, as we grow, we use our senses and our mind to push back the darkness. We learn to speak, read and write. We explore any number of exciting new domains. But the more we learn, the more we realise that there is much more “out there” that we do not know, and in moments of deeper reflection we might glimpse the truth that there is an even greater “beyond” containing who-knows-how-much that “we don’t even know that we don’t know”.

It is wise therefore to welcome every new epiphany, being careful to sift them, especially today when some mass media set out deliberately to deceive us, and many individuals are dishonest on social media.

This festival of the Epiphany, originally celebrated twelve days after Christmas, recalls the story of three mysterious “wise ones” who came to visit the child Jesus in Bethlehem. Paying him homage and giving him their gifts, they represent the wisdom and the riches of the mysterious lands of the East. They also represent the hunger of all peoples to learn more about the reality of God, about whom the descendants of Abraham have received their particular epiphanies. Today’s festival shows us, in the person of Jesus, that God has come among us and loves humanity and the whole created world.

On this feast it is also useful to ponder the common mechanism by which we sometimes resist our epiphanies, and refuse to be enlightened. We do this when we are uncomfortable with, or even afraid of change, although change is happening in every moment of our lives. We might actually resist change that is essential to life: particularly when we are challenged to change our minds.

When resisting like this, we often unconsciously go through an interesting process. We “set aside” or ignore information that might show our previous position was wrong and now needs to be abandoned. If we deliberately refuse to look at that information, our actions are perverse and blame-worthy, for when we “set things aside” in this way, we open the door to many kinds of evil. The process is particularly dangerous when we defend the political or religious institution we have inherited from our family, and which we depend upon for our security .

It is vitally important that we search out and break free of such prejudices, and when friends or even enemies point out that in defending our position we are ignoring certain truths, perhaps this epiphany is the most precious of all.

As we set out into 2024, an honest look at the world will show us on what our comfort in one of the world’s wealthiest nations depends. It is built upon violent historic conquests and present deprivation of the majority of the world’s peoples, who live and die in poverty because of our greed and careless waste of resources. Do we really need to consume so much? To spend so much on extravagant fireworks displays and costly military machinery that can be used only to destroy?

Can we seek a new year’s epiphany, by listening to the voices of many young and older people who are urging us to live more simply? It might greatly benefit us if we put aside time to be silent, listening to the Mystery of the unseen God present throughout the cosmos, asking to see more clearly what we are doing to God’s people and this planet.

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Real Good News

Advent 2B 10. 12. 2023

[Mark 1:1-28]

The Jordan Valley

Some time around the year 70 CE a man we know as Mark began to write down stories about Jesus of Nazareth, which he had heard from others or had witnessed himself. His short book – we can read it in less than ninety minutes – was not just a record of what Jesus said and did. Mark called it the Euangelion, the Good News, because it was a proclamation that a new age had begun: the Reign or Rule of God.

People in Mark’s time would recognise that this Good News challenged the Roman empire that ruled the entire Mediterranean world. The emperor and his generalsused the same word euangelion to announce some new conquest adding more gold, slaves and territory to the vast empire that Rome’s power had already seized. Mark’s little scroll dared to announce that here, now, was the true Good News: God’s Reign has begun, for the Transcendent One has come, showing that God loves us. This prophet Jesus, who is in some unique way is Son of God, brings the good news that we can change the world by loving and being compassionate to others, even our enemies. We can do this if we are prepared to imitate Jesus by “losing our life” in order to gain it at the deepest level.

Mark’s announcement and Jesus’ teaching presents us with immediate, practical questions: what must we do, now, to help bring about the Rule or Reign of God? Among many evils that challenge us in the world today, on the West Bank of the same river Jordan in which Jesus was baptised, enormous injustice is being done to our Palestinian sisters and brothers. The United Nations has many times condemned the systematic, government-sponsored theft of the Palestinian’s land, accompanied by the destruction of their homes and farms and the terrorising of the population by Israeli “settlers”. It condemns the fifty-six years of occupation by the army; the night raids leading to hundreds being jailed without reason, indefinitely. All this is intimately linked to the genocide being carried out in Gaza, 140 kilometres to the South West, where in response to Hamas’ recent terrorist attack, Israel has killed 17,000 people, mostly non-combatants and almost half of them children.

Some people find it difficult that I refer to such things in these reflections on the scriptures, but it is necessary to refer to contemporary injustices, because the Reign of God involves our real life, and each of us has a role to play in bringing about peace in our world. The essential first step is to know the truth – in this case to counter the systematic falsehoods being spread through powerful world-wide media, such as Murdoch press and tv. It is essential that we hear the many Jewish historians and commentators who expose the actions of their own Zionist government. A few of these authorities are Gabor Maté, Ilan Pappe, Norm Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky and Anna Balzer * who point out that the founders of the state of Israel intended and declared from its beginning in 1948 to drive all Palestinians from the land and refuse them their right to return.

This plan – it is documented – was put into effect during the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) when 750,000 Palestinians were terrorised by massacres and violently expelled. The Israeli army then destroyed 531 of their villages. The United Nations has in vain protested against these crimes, as it has tried in vain to stop the genocide in Gaza. Its Secretary General correctly pointed out that the terrorist attack of October 7^th did not happen in a vacuum.

Mark’s gospel, in its very first line, challenges every one of us to recognise that God has come among us in Jesus. Before himself dying in the struggle to bring about the Rule of God, Jesus would tell us that “The truth will make you free.” (John 8:32) So while hundreds of thousands around the world march in the streets to plead for those who suffer in the world’s current wars, can we at least respond with deep compassion and prayer, acknowledging that because God is within every person, we are actually connected with all persons on every side? Seeing this, may we then join in love to bring the madness to an end?

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* My question is: if you were more shaken by the Israeli lives lost in one day than in 75 years of killing Palestinians, why is that? – Anna Balzer.

Do we use our gifts wisely?

Sunday 33A 19^th November 2023

[Matthew 25:14-30]

On television, “Linda” told how she had been cheated out of thousands of dollars, but admitted she had been unwise in spending her limited resources. She had bought an expensive smartphone and a washing machine, but when she had difficulty paying for them, she allowed the retail company to take small fortnightly payments from her Centrelink pension. After a time, “Linda” was horrified to find that the interest deducted by the retailers meant that in the end she paid more than double the original price.

This week’s parable from Matthew’s gospel is also about the unwise use of money. The story tells how the three trustees showed different levels of competence in managing the silver talents that their master had loaned them to trade with. It is an interesting footnote that because of this bible story, the word “talent”, which once meant a bar of silver, has come to mean a person’s ability or skill.

Matthew dramatic story does not have room to mention the many complexities involved in the way we use money in real life. Unlike the gospel’s three investors, “Linda” was not the only one making choices about her money. She was seriously impacted by the way other people were exercising their talents. Dishonest people were using the institution of Centrelink, and their own skills, to strip her of her limited funds.

Although they are necessary, institutions often enable the people in them to do great harm. Only recently, Centrelink agents had been caught out – following orders from government ministers – demanding that pensioners repay money that they did not owe. These “robodebts” were calculated using a computer algorithm that assumed the pensioners were still earning income that they were no longer earning. The “robodebts” caused enormous harm to vulnerable people, pushing many into despair. A few killed themselves.

Every one of us enjoys amazing gifts: we exist in this beautiful world and are equipped various talents: we can move about, talk, think, love, and create music or art. Parents use the gift of love to enhance the lives of the children they have given life to. We all improve our world by using our gifts to teach or heal, to trade or entertain, but if we misuse our skills we can do much harm. If we are part of a large institution like Centrelink, the army, the church or any profit-making organisation we can forget that the clients we are dealing with are not just numbers, but are people who deserve our compassion.

Matthew’s gospel story is one of a series of parables that are not just lessons in ethics, but tell us that we will give account of ourselves at a personal meeting with the One who is the source of our gifts. The other stories tell of the wicked tenants who schemed to acquire the owner’s vineyard; of the stewards who deal kindly with the servants under his command, and the other who did not; of the prudent and imprudent maidens waiting for the bridegroom. These stories nudge us to reflect on how we use our gifts, in the context of our eventual meeting with the CosmicChrist, who once walked among us as the Human One, Jesus of Nazareth.

These warning stories are ultimately about our relationship with Christ, who is not a selfish, demanding CEO billionaire, but is the God who is intimately within us as we struggle to use our gifts well. For our gifts have been given to us for a purpose: that, in the company of those whom we have helped and served, we will eventually hear: “come and join in your Master’s happiness”. (Matthew 25:23) “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:35)

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Did Jesus separate politics from religion?

Sunday 29A 22^nd October 2023

[Matthew 22:15-21]

When two opposing teams compete on the football field, we enjoy an exciting afternoon. It’s a game. But what happens when we divide the world, or our local part of it, into two competing sides? The world we are born into is divided like this: our family may be Christian – either Catholic or Protestant; or maybe Muslim – either Sunni or Shia; or perhaps Jewish – orthodox or liberal – or then again, Hindu or Sikh… or anything else.

One of the harshest and most destructive divisions is between a colonising power and the people it has conquered, when the newcomers profit from the resources, land and labour of the original inhabitants. Jesus was born into such a conquered land. For nearly a century the Roman empire had controlled Palestine by allowing puppet kings and Jewish religious leaders to manage and tax the population.

But Jesus did not teach people to rise up in revolt against the Roman oppressors. He invited the burdened peasants – and the Romans and us later generations – to “Repent, get a new mind, see the bigger picture and believe the Good News.” This News is that every person is loved by the Infinite One who created us. We are all equally valuable to this mysterious Parent/God, who calls us to love our enemies. If we can do this, we no longer need to find our identity, dignity or pride in belonging to any nation or group.

But Jesus’ teaching, then and now, hugely threatens leaders who exercise power by dominating a majority. So the leaders of Jesus’ own religion joined with the State to murder him. Matthew’s gospel shows the build-up to his death: Jesus challenging the religious leaders by symbolically cleansing the House of Prayer by driving out commercial and financial interests; then warning them in parables that they would be stripped of their leadership and excluded from the coming Reign of God.

Then the priests and King Herod’s agents tried to trap Jesus into speaking against the Emperor: “Should we pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” If Jesus agrees to pay taxes, he will lose credibility with the populace whom Rome is oppressing. If he refuses, he will show himself a rebel against Rome. But Jesus refuses to divide the world into either-or. He sees it as profoundly one. Caesar’s power is real enough, so give him what his violent conquest lets him demand, for now. But Caesar is only a tiny part of God’s empire – the whole world and every person – so “…give to God what belongs to God”.

Jesus is not teaching: “keep your religion separate from politics”. The task of politics is to run states justly, to be fair to everyone, to negotiate peace… how different from our dominant capitalist system, based largely on arms-dealing and the profits of war!

Don’t we need, urgently, to bring prayer and Christian/Muslim/Jewish action into the heart of politics, and to see all war’s’ victims – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine and Israel as images of the living God?

Jesus skilfully avoided dualism, “us” against “them”, Jews against Romans. Can we follow him by refusing to oppose Arabs against Jews, Russians against Ukrainians? Can we each help to bring peace to the present terrible conflicts by prayer, by emptying ourselves of anger and thoughts of revenge for long-standing injustices, and in helpless waiting allow God to work from within us? “Blessed are the poor”.

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